


Unspoken Fear

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Fear, Friendship, Gen, Knight and Squire - Freeform, Ordeal of Knighthood, Success, failure - Freeform, mentoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 19:32:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19730347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Owen and Wyldon are filled with unspoken fears as Owen's Ordeal approaches.





	Unspoken Fear

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Malorie's Peak Prompt "Vulnerable" at Goldenlake.

Unspoken Fear 

Owen made as if to rise from the sofa as Wyldon returned from the meeting where the order in which the squires underwent the Ordeal of Knighthood was decided. It had been an uneasy meeting, as it always was in Wyldon’s experience, and this year it was made all the more awkward by the fact that he wasn’t attending it as the training master but as a knightmaster who couldn’t help but watch the proceedings with a special concern for one lad. He had forgotten that feeling of powerless worry when he was the training master expected to maintain a dispassionate, stoic expression throughout the meeting. It had been dislocating to look across the table at Lord Padraig occupying, upon his recommendation, the chair he had filled for fifteen years, so instead he had studied the faces of his fellow knightmasters that all served as grim mirrors, reflecting the roiling mixture of unspoken pride and fear for their squires back at him when he most wanted to forget it. 

Coming back from his woolgathering, Wyldon noticed that if Owen stood, he would disturb the elkhound Fleetfoot, who was using Owen’s knee as a pillow for drowsing and drooling. Fleetfoot was no longer as swift of foot as he had been when Wyldon named him in the kennels twelve springs ago. Where once his greatest delight had been in hunting, Fleetfoot’s pleasure was now in sleeping—preferably upon people. Whenever those people were so discourteous as to move without his permission, Fleetfoot would emerge from his slumber to emit a moan of displeasure at the unexpected motion. 

Out of respect for Fleetfoot’s old bones, Wyldon made a curt gesture for Owen to remain seated. It was traditional anyway for knightmasters to indulge the squires who would be facing their Ordeal at Midwinter—to relax the strict discipline that had governed the boys’ lives for the past eight years so they could briefly be boys again before the Chamber used the anvil and fire of their fears to forge them into men. Traditions, Wyldon believed, were best clung to for certainty and continuity during times of transition. 

“My lord?” The question in Owen’s stone gray eyes was clear as Wyldon settled into the couch beside him. 

“Your Ordeal will be the last night of Midwinter.” Wyldon could hear in his tone the echo of the resignation he had felt as one by one the queen had selected each name that wasn’t his squire’s, leaving Owen for last. 

“Yes, sir.” Owen was trying and largely failing to look brave. It was easiest, Wyldon knew, for him to be bold when he didn’t have to think—when he could just charge into a situation without contemplating it. 

Silence save for the cackling flames in the hearth fell between them until, as often happened, Owen broke it. “How did you feel before your Ordeal, my lord?” 

The question surprised Wyldon though perhaps it shouldn’t have, and surprise sharpened his tone as he answered, “I was nervous, of course, but eager to be free of my knightmaster’s instruction. I suppose every lad feels the same way.” 

Nervous was probably an understatement of what he had been before his Ordeal when his hands had been too sweaty to hold weapons in the proper, firm grip, and his dreams had been nothing but nightmares for a week leading up to his Ordeal, but he’d never had Owen’s flair for dramatic descriptions. 

“I hate change.” Owen stared down at Fleetfoot’s ear, which he was gently coiling around his finger as Fleetfoot began to snore. “I’m no good at it.” 

That startled a snort out of Wyldon. 

“I do hate change.” Owen lifted his head with a fairly indignant expression at Wyldon’s snort. 

“You’re too young to hate change.” Wyldon wondered if he had taught his squire too well—if he had destroyed some of that dauntless spirit after all. He hoped not, but he couldn’t be sure. There were no certainties in life—in relationships—no matter how much he pretended there were so he wouldn’t feel perpetually unmoored in the sea of an ever-changing, tumultuous world. “You aren’t allowed to hate change until you’re at least thirty.” 

Owen made no reply to this new stricture. Instead his troubled, unfocused mind seem to flit to its next concern. “What if I fail my Ordeal, my lord?” 

For a moment, Wyldon was tempted to assure him that he wouldn’t fail. Then it hit him like a slap to the cheek that his assurances in such a matter were worthless. After all, once he would have been prepared to make assurances that Joren and Vinson were pass their Ordeals, and both boys had failed in a historically dismal fashion. 

Clasping Owen’s shoulder, he at last responded with more honesty and less assurance. “You’re only eighteen, Owen. You’re just beginning your journey. Don’t burden yourself with concerns of success or failure.” 

“It’s hard not to think of failure, considering my Ordeal is ahead of me, sir.” Owen bit his lip like a dog chewing a bone. 

“If you act honorably and justly, success and failure lose their meaning to define you. There is only the good that you do.” Wyldon remembered learning that lesson too late in life after Joren and Vinson had failed their Ordeals. He wanted his squire to learn it sooner. “You helped teach me that when you became my squire. I was too focused on my failure to think about the good I could do until I had to pour myself into training you.” 

“It was truly Kel who taught you that lesson then.” Owen spoke matter-of-factly, and Wyldon frowned because he would certainly have never been tactless enough to inform Owen that he had only thought to ask the boy to be his squire because Mindelan had suggested it. Mindelan not being prone to putting her foot in her mouth, he likewise doubted that she had mentioned her suggestion to Owen. Catching Wyldon’s expression, Owen added cheerily, “I figured out she must’ve suggested that you take me as your squire because she wasn’t very surprised when I told her the news.” 

Owen could be cleverer—more subtle—than Wyldon sometimes gave him credit for, and this was plainly was of those times. There was no bitterness in his comment, however. Owen didn’t have the artifice for that. For him, it was an uncomplicated positive that a friend would advocate for him when presented with an opportunity to do so. To him, that was what a friend was expected to do, and there was no need to be bothered beyond that. 

“She might have suggested it.” Wyldon grunted in an effort to preserve his pride. “However, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t believe it a good idea. Nobody can ever persuade me to do anything if I don’t believe it a good idea, squire.” 

“Yes, my lord.” Owen’s earnestness cut away any lingering, unspoken fear of failure either of them might have felt. “I won’t disappoint you or Kel when I take my Ordeal, I promise.”


End file.
